12 year old Suspended for bringing Sports Illustrated: Swimsuit to Public School!!! (1 Viewer)

[Erik.Ha]

I liked it better when parents decided what was appropriate for their children to look at...

The nanny state has taken over....

 

[JonZ]

Yea,I think I made the right decision - not to have any children.

 

[Malcolm R]

Me too. There are far too many around already.

 

[Erik.Ha]

That isn't true at all.

1. The vast, VAST majority of parents don't "shirk their parental duties". Certainly not to the point that the state should be allowed to micromanage parenting.

2. That statement presumes that another parent who allows his kid to have the sports illustrated swimsuit issue is WRONG because YOU wouldn't make the same decision. People have the right to come to different conclusions, set different boundries, and determine what is appropriate for their own kids, without interference from you, who by your own admission neither has children, nor wants them, or from the government.

 

[Tony Whalen]

I think that whole "shirking" issue is beside the point here, at least to some degree...

We've got a case where a 12 year old kid was suspended for having pictures of skantily-clad women in his possession.

Had it been a Playboy or worse, fine, I'd understand that.

He was suspended for having something that had "sexually suggestive" material in it.

But you could say the same thing about one of my local papers, which always features a half-page-sized bikini-clad sexpot in the sports section. Or Cosmopolitan. Or PC Gamer. Or just about ANY magazine that contains advertising.

So the question is, where is the line?

To me, the line is nudity. Period. (And even that bothers me to some degree, as I've long held the belief that North American society is far too anal about the human body. It's okay to see people shot and all manner of gore in movies and mags, but god forbid a kid should see a nipple. Horrors. )

Anywho... just my two cents.

 

[Ted Lee]

america is just too "uptight" about sex. period.

look at the whole janet jackson debacle. i mean, big deal -- so she flashed her boob in public. whatever...

but, for this particular scenario, i guess i can see the difference. someone said the school already had a policy in place? if so, then yes, the child should be punished. but kicked-out? that's just stupid.

 

[Tony Whalen]

"Sexually suggestive" is a pretty broad brush to paint with... at least IMHO. Like I said... that could encompass just about any print-media with advertising in it...

 

[Mike Broadman]

I also have a problem with how much suspension is used. It's just pushing kids away from school.

 

[Ted Lee]

well, i gotta admit that pretty much any picture of marissa miller could be deemed sexually explicit.

if you're not thinking that way .. then something just ain't right!

this is nothing any ordinary hetero-sexual 12year old wouldn't want to check out. c'mon ... he's just being a kid.

again, without knowing the exact circumstances, it's hard to make a judgement call. if he's being punished for an existing school rule, then fine. but anything worse (especially expulsion) is just retarded.

 

[Tony Whalen]

Well I've always thought that suspension was a stupid punishment anyway.

"We're sending you home for three days so you can think about what you did!"

"So I'm off school for three days? WOW! I mean...bummer!"

Sure, your parents will be honked off, but you still don't have to go to school for a little while. When I was in elementary school, I wouldn't have considered that much of a penalty!

What ever happened to punishments like having to do extra homework...or writing an essay? Or even the really-old standby of writing "I will not..." on the black/white board?

 

[Malcolm R]

Me too. At my school we had "in-school suspension." You still came to school, but you did nothing all day but sit in a little room with a desk and your textbooks. Basically a "solitary" study hall. I think it was a converted janitor's closet. A lot less pleasant than at home suspension where you're free to watch TV, movies, play video games, or go to the mall/movies.

 

[Eric Kahn]

does that mean they have to suspend the teachers when their newspaper has store adds with pictures of women in underwear???

the morality police have gotten out of hand

 

[Gary Seven]

Yes... I believe this post made it reason number 9,357 as to why my wife and I do not have kids.

 

[BrettB]

Well the fact is that lines have to be drawn somewhere.

I think the suspension might be over-the-top, but I also think we probably don't have all the facts.

 

[Yee-Ming]

Around here the latest flap is over a case where a kid had a pornographic VCD (no details as to how it was porn though), and the principal actually called the police. Around here porn is illegal, and the principal justified this on the basis that in her view, it wasn't just an isolated case and it seemed that the kids had access to a fair bit of it, so police investigations into the source were warranted. This was junior high/high school level, though, not elementary school.

 

[Joris van W.]

Well people, these kind of things are the price of living in the USA. The country with the most churches....... and the biggest porn industry...

 

[Ross Williams]

I'm having a kid... and this stuff scares the hell out of me. How bad is it going to be in another 12 years when my kid's looking at this stuff? My dad handed me a Playboy when I was about 12 and I turned out just fine. Nudity is WAY too big of an issue in this country.

 

[Malcolm R]

It's not going to get any better. Definitely one reason not to have kids. Why introduce a new life into this crappy world? Morality and quality of life are both on the decline. I know I wouldn't want to be born now and have to grow up in the coming years.

 

[Erik.Ha]

People have been spouting fatalistic BS like this for the last 5000 years. Every generation thinks the next generation will be the last because "things are going down the tubes so fast..."

Our parents said the same thing about us and MTV. Hell, My parents were sure KISS was satanism... Now I look back on that and laugh... My parent's Parent's were sure Elvis was the devil and his pelvic thrust would spell the end of civilization. And their parents JUST KNEW Jazz would ruin the world, with all those easy women and BOOZE!. And what about CO-Ed colleges??? And OH MY GOD, WOMEN VOTING??? ARE YOU CRAZY!!! And Before that it was SWIMMING!!! AT A BEACH!!! IN PUBLIC!!! With you feet uncovered??? SINFUL!

Its an evolution... is it all great? Probably not, but we adapt... and realize that its not nearly as bad as our first reaction...

To bring it back to the topic at hand, So what was different when we went to school?

I routinely carried a pocket knife (A swiss army to be precise) to school, as did many boys I knew, and as boys did for GENERATIONS previously. Of course, we weren't stabbing each other at recess with them. Hell, my school had a shooting range on campus until a few years before I got there. It had an "armory" where kids were to store their rifles when not in use. We also had a room called "the Smoking room" were upper classman went to smoke cigarettes, pipes and cigars with the full knowledge of the faculty. My high school was a boarding school... Guess what, I not only had a FULL set of steak knives (which would get me suspended at public high?) I had A HUNTING KNIFE!!! A GREAT BIG ONE!!! TWELVE INCHES OF RAZER SHARP STEAL!!! AND A BB Gun. Did anybody ever get shot with the BB Gun (well... actually, yeah, but nobody ever found out... it was an accident... sort of) Did the faculty care??? OF COURSE NOT! Would I have gotten suspended??? OF COURSE NOT! Hell, I remember one time a teacher needed a screw driver to tighten a bolt on his desk, and half the class whiped out swiss army knives... He didn't blink... Hell, I remember when a faculty member came into my buddies room, and we were all sitting there looking at his stack of playboys... teacher came in, chuckled, grabed the top one and said "nice tits..." Asked "are you guys planning on studying anything other than biology tonight?" We said "Hadn't planned on it..." He chuckled, tossed it back on the bed and left.

 

[Ted Lee]

spoken like people who doesn'tt have kids in their life ... or aren't willing to take some responsibility ... or isn't willing to give a new life a chance to succeed ... or ....

note: my above statement is just another example of silly blanket statements - it is not intended to offend the poster

anyway, back to the thread topic.

erik has it right. our world is certainly changing and we just have to go with it.

i recently spoke with a friend of mine who i graduated high school with. she went back and spoke to our high-school principal and was shocked at what she heard and saw.

the school had fences, there were security and metal detectors, etc. the principal opened up a drawer and showed all the weapons (no guns though...) that were inside of it. he said drugs and violence were definitely more prevalent.

when i went there, we had none of that violent stuff. there were drugs, but when was there not drugs in school.

anyway, i can understand why the school would want to try to protect it's kids ... but (as i already mentioned) they may just be having a knee-jerk reaction.